Woe, Canada

VOCM's annual Questioning-of-the-Canada-Day came early this year:

July 4, 2005: Do you celebrate Canada Day?

July 4, 2006: Did you take part in any Canada Day activities over the weekend?

July 2, 2007: Do you plan to take part in Canada Day celebrations this weekend?

July 2, 2008: Do you celebrate Canada Day?

July 2, 2009: Did you celebrate Canada Day?

July 1, 2010: Are you planning any special celebrations for Memorial Day/Canada Day?

June 28, 2011: Do you plan to celebrate Canada Day this year?

May 21, 2012: Do you think the province and local MP's should boycott Canada Day this year as a protest of all the federal cuts by the Harper government.

Special for @whiff83...

... and anyone else who somehow simultaneously imagines that they are fiscally conservative, yet support the NDP government of Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale.

This chart shows the three-year rolling average (to smooth out a bit of lumpiness and tease out the mid-term trends) of provincial public-sector employment as a share of all employment, in any given province, at any time since Statistics Canada started counting. "Provincial public-sector employment" includes the direct provincial civil service, the public secondary and post-secondary education system, the public health-care system, and provincial crown corporations.

For as long as Statistics Canada has been counting, Newfoundland and Labrador has always had the proportionately largest provincial public sector workforce. However, under the current "conservative" government, even that already-large public sector has grown to a size never before seen in any other province... not even the "socialist" NDP ones. By 2011, one in four people employed in the province was employed by the provincial government, a school board, a university or college, a health care board, or a provincial crown corporation.

And this, despite a "conservative" government which came to power pledging to decrease the size of the public-sector payroll through attrition. It's remarkable, what a couple of strikes — and a scary hit in the quarterly CRA poll — can do to change your deeply-rooted fiscally-conservative beliefs.

Fact-check in aisle 4

Here's how Kathy Dunderdale defended her decision last fall to give herself and the House of Assembly a Thanksgeaster holiday:

Premier Kathy Dunderdale is defending her decision to keep the legislature closed until spring.

She said she expects the government would be working until December to prepare legislation, and next spring is the earliest it would be tabled.

BondPapers consults the Order Paper and, not surprisingly, finds that excuse wanting.

The CBC report continued:

Dunderdale has questioned the value of spending time in the house of assembly.

"I don't find it a place for a very healthy, open, constructive debate to start with," she said,

"Most of my issues are around the quality of debate and the research and the fact that you can pretty well get up in the house of assembly and say whatever it is you like. You don't have to be concerned with truth."

The Telegram's Russell Wangersky — he's not even one of the Newfoundland Wangerskies — identifies the proximate cause of the that lack of rigorous debate.

House of Assembly shocker!

Jerome Kennedy speaks the truth.

From Thursday's proceedings in the Bow-Wow Parliament:

MR. BALL: The Leader of the PC Party in Nova Scotia has introduced a bill to protect ratepayers in that province from higher power rates. The bill would ensure that Muskrat Falls is reviewed by the Utilities Board after all the information is available.

I ask the minister: Will you allow our Public Utilities Board the opportunity to review the Muskrat Falls Project once all the information is available, just as your PC colleagues did in Nova Scotia?

MR. KENNEDY: These are not our PC colleagues in Nova Scotia. We are not one big, happy family in the PC Party in this country, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we are probably more closely aligned with Premier Dexter’s vision of the future as an NDP Premier than we are with anything with the PCs.

Not fit for it (II)

More from the Member — one seriously hesitates to use the Hon. honorific he's notionally entitled to — for Carbonear–Harbour Grace, from Wednesday's proceedings in the pathetic excuse of a provincial legislature:

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, Mr. Speaker. First, to the point of order, the member opposite referred to something that the Member for Terra Nova had to say. He has no way, Mr. Speaker, to answer at this point. Essentially, what he is doing is attributing comments to the member that there is no way to verify or to establish.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order. I ask the member to continue with his comments.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since there is no point of order, what I would say to the member opposite is that we were not agreeing with you; people were laughing at you.

To suggest Mr. Kennedy stay classy would be to falsely imply he was classy in the first place. The man continues:

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, I certainly do not want to interfere with the Member for Burgeo - La Poile’s Victoria Day weekend. Maybe he has a reservation at Butter Pot Park, I do not know. I will say, Mr. Speaker, make no plans for the May 24 weekend, as he suggested legislation would allow.

Mr. Speaker, since 2004, we have sat beyond the May 24 weekend every year. In 2010, we sat on June 24, Mr. Speaker. As I have indicated, this sitting of the House – a session is a number of sittings – we started on March 5, a week before the member opposite would have us sit, and we will sit, Mr. Speaker, until at least the middle or end of June. It will probably be the longest, single sitting of this House in more than twenty years, Mr. Speaker.

Funny words from a member of the party that brought you Thanksgeaster.